The social media platform X has sparked major outrage after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of women by stripping their garments.
Numerous examples have been seen where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from women to render them in swimwear without permission, as well as to place them in inappropriate situations.
Developer Response and Legal Position
XAI, the organization behind Grok, remained silent to questions, aside from an standard response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government representative stated that new laws is being brought forward to ban image stripping software. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and significant fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the risk" of people viewing illegal content on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some paid-for functions—which responds to X users' prompts when they mention it in a message.
It is frequently used to offer reactions or further context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also can edit an posted image through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The system has been faulted for allowing users to create pictures and clips with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was in the past accused of creating graphic material of celebrities.
"X has been allowing the generation and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have not witnessed any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "portraying likenesses of persons in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or share non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and stated this applied to explicit AI images created with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "appropriate steps" to "reduce the danger" of users coming across illegal content on their services and to delete it promptly when they are notified of it.
